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SCAN Newsletter of the St. Clair Amateur Radio Club January/February 2005 Club Repeaters: 147.120+ / 224.120- / 444.625+ |
Upcoming Meetings
January 27 and February 24 are the next two club
meetings. Election of officers is coming
soon.
Crime Desk
A
reward of 500 microfarads is offered for information leading to the arrest of
Hop-a-long Capacity. This un-rectified criminal escaped from a Weston primary
cell where he had been clamped in ions awaiting the gauss chamber. He is
charged with the induction of an 18 turn coil named Milli
Henry who was found choked and robbed of valuable joules. He is armed with a
carbon rod and is a potential killer. Capacity is also charged with driving a
dc motor over a Wheatstone bridge and refusing to let the band- pass. If
encountered, he may offer series resistance. The electromotive force spent the
night searching for him in a magnetic field, where he had gone to earth. They
had no success and believed he had returned ohm via a short circuit. He was
last seen riding a kilocycle with his friend Eddy Current who was playing a
harmonic.
Interference Issues (Non-BPL)
CNN
recently reported that some military bases are switching their communications equipment
over to some new frequencies. These
frequencies have always been allotted to the military for their use, but they
have also been used on a low-power secondary basis unlicensed basis by things
like garage door openers. There have
been some reports of garage door openers failing to function or malfunctioning
in areas surrounding bases that have converted to the new frequencies. No information was available about which
bases may be switching but you may want to be on the lookout for interference in the
event that Scott AFB makes the change.
Apparently the military will work with owners of affected garage doors
but you will need to contact the base with your interference complaint.
Internet Files
An
interesting new service has been made available on the Internet. It can be found at www.dxtuner.com The service streams
audio from various receiver sites from around the world. A variety of different receivers, antennas,
and band focuses are available from FM broadcast to shortwave to VHF to
amateur. The service offers a free
signup where a limited number of tuners are available and a paid subscription
which gives access to many more tuners from around the world. An interesting use would be to hear how your
propagated signal sounds from various locations around the globe. As you might expect, the demo tuners can be
crowded and only oine person can tune at a time. Please read and be aware of the rules of
proper dxtuner etiquette. Your editor experienced some rude behavior on
his first try of the system by a user who couldn’t be bothered to be
polite. While this seems to be a symptom
of today’s society, let’s not give non-hams an adverse view of us.
Hamfests
Ham-Com
is June 3-5, 2005 in
Contest Calendar
Feb 6 0000Z-0400Z North
American Sprint SSB
Feb 14 1300Z-Feb 19
Feb 13 0000Z-0400Z North
American Sprint CW
Feb 12 0000Z-Feb 13 2400Z CQ
Worldwide RTTY WPX Contest
Feb 19 0000Z-2400Z ARRL
International DX Contest CW
Feb 26 1800Z-Feb 27 0600Z
North American QSO Party RTTY
Activities
Mark Thurman, KC9CXV has put out the call for
volunteers who would like to showcase ham radio at this year’s Boy Scout Camporee April 9, 2005 in